


Try Again

by zeldadestry



Category: L.A. Confidential (1997)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:59:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is timing everything?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Try Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sistermagpie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistermagpie/gifts).



“Timing is everything,” an old character actor once told Jack on the “Badge of Honor” set. The conviction with which he said it was what struck Jack at the time but, since Matt Ramsey’s death, he’s been considering the truth in the saying. What if he’d had just a little easier time convincing himself to go to the hotel and stop the set-up? If he’d left just a few minutes earlier, would it have been enough? Could he have reached Ramsey before the poor kid ended up with his throat slit? Los Angeles was a cruel town, even for a beautiful young man, or maybe especially for the beautiful. They were the product and people bought them and sold them until they were all used up. Like a beast of burden, once they’d fulfilled their purpose they were destroyed.

Ed can never think of Jack without wishing he could go back, do something differently. Go through all that shit again? Of course, if it meant a better fate for his friend, who took a chance on Ed when no other officer would even look at him. Ed’s brand of success is hollow, and he knows that, but it’s what he has, and so he embraces it as much as he can in the daylight.   
Late nights at the station, though, sometimes, before he looks up from his desk when a man walks through the door, his heart rises momentarily, insanely, as though he might ever find Jack or Bud White before him again.

Bud knows better than to dream of a saved world. If it weren’t fucked up this way, it would just be ruined in another. Would he sleep easier in a world where his mother lived, where he’d never hurt Lynn, where he was never shot up at the Victory motel? Sure, but getting shot like he did is a strange moment in his history, not as painful as others might believe. He did what he set out for, what he intended, he protected Ed. It was no sacrifice or, if it was, it was worth it. It was all worth it.


End file.
